Tuesday, November 15, 2016

I am really very upset by the election, and this doesn't begin to address what I think is needed in these times, but I had a few thoughts on the role of art.

Prediction:

The issue the arts will grapple with in upcoming weird times
will be empathy.I thought this before
the election, and I thought of it independently, but then I started hearing he
word crop up in conversations about often enough that it could not be a random
thing.And then the election
happened…and suddenly, empathy is a DefCon Five thing, in the arts, and in
everything.

In 1993 Dave Hickey said beauty would be the big issue of
art in the 1990’s.It kind of fizzled,
if you ask me, but at least it became a topic one could actually reasonably
discuss.Before that, to mention beauty
in a conversation about art was to sound hopelessly retrograde and right
wing.Beauty was Miss America in all its
oppressive obnoxiousness. I bring beauty up in a conversation about empathy,
not just apropos predictions but because of the relationship between them.I will get to that presently, but here’s the
spoiler, as phrased by Rodgers and Hammerstein, if you can’t wait: “Do I love you because you're
beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?”

What
the world needs now is empathy, sweet empathy…that aspect of loving your
neighbor that requires that you imagine yourself in their shoes.And by neighbor, I include your enemy, first
and foremost.Because empathy untested
by that level of discomfort is mere words.

Before
the election, I had luxury problems and one of my favorites was to fret over
the role of IMAGINATION in the arts.Now
I know.Without imagination, you are
merely staring at your neighbor’s shoes, with no avenue for inhabiting them;
such is the tyranny of separate consciousnesses.Imagination is no luxury; it is the main
gateway to empathy.So this is a call
for artists to insist on the value of their imaginations.Show me what’s in your brain, so I can better
be at one with you!Show me how I can
use my imagination so you can inhabit mine!

The
second thing about empathy is near and dear to my heart and yet another thing
that seems like a luxury problem.Why is
handwork important? I am sick to death of the post-Industrial Revolution
notions of handiwork being good for the soul, that handcrafts are
virtuous.Sometimes they are just
indulgent and escapist and sometimes craftspersons are creeps.Why should
handwork matter in our age?

Because
it engenders empathy.Here’s how.Look at a manufactured item and look at a
hand made one.The manufactured one has
no trace of handwork, but obviouslythe
handmade one will.Now, I hate to bring
up Mirror Neurons because a philosopher friend of mine once made a terribly
cogent argument to me that Mirror Neurons merely locate something miraculous
that we have known for eons and that is that we have the potential for
compassion and empathy.Who cares that a
scientist discovered where and how and named them?The fact was always there.OK, whatever.

When
looking at a handmade object mirror neurons go into action and do their funky
thing.Even without a maker present
making the object, one is virtually forced to imagine the act, thereby
inhabiting the reality of another person’s human consciousness if only by proxy
and only for a second. And that is damn well better than nothing.Better, even than the idea that by being craftsy
it will keep you from stealing cars or whatever weird virtue you ascribe to
crafts.(But that’s good too.)

Finally,
empathy and love are obviously related…and they relate to the notion of beauty
in the arts.Beauty, as I always like to
remind people, is not the same as prettiness.Prettiness is pleasant and pleasing as well as measurable (Think golden
rectangles, and Fibonacci sequences).Hickey, in “The Invisible Dragon” where he attempts to resuscitate
beauty, mistakenly defines beauty as
“the agency that caused visual pleasure in the beholder”. But beauty, of course
can only cause pleasure insomuch as it can cause pain…JUST LIKE LOVE DOES.)Beauty, like love, truth, the divine and
other grand abstractions must exist at the nexus of mind and body, they must be
yin/yangs that give rise to their own opposite, in order that it be a full
spectrum authentic experience.In order to
understand each other we must understand and love them as flawed, unresolved,
contradictory and difficult.And we must
understand this in own selves as well.When you love someone, this must happen and when you love an artwork it
is the same.Artworks are, after all, human souls
encoded into non-human form, so that we may have a chance to echolocate off
them and discover our own consciousness in some "cosmic" context.Beauty (I
repeat: not prettiness) is the visual equivalent of love.It is an experience without which we suffer
as individuals and as a human race and often that suffering, that depreivation leads to extinction.Because if who cares…then who cares?

So I
will say it again, in these coming weird and possibly terrible and frightening
times, the issue in the arts will be empathy. Long live love!

We are all creators, and all that we create is an expression of the divine truths within. Among these is the oneness of consciousness, and empathy is how we experience that connection. I love how you describe this, Judith, as it gets to the heart of what we feel through artistic expression. We need these feelings more than ever. Thank you for sharing your soul with us!

John Dewey came to mind when you brought up Empathy induced by handcraft. So I have his little paperback book out now, 'Art as Experience' and am reviewing the chapter on The Expressive Object. I would have liked for him to consider 'mirror neurons' as having a role. I bet John would appreciate a physiological mechanism that encourages empathy.

I just discovered you and your art which I find fascinating. I had polio at age 20 months and have lived life since then in a wheelchair and as a result have a very asymmetrical body.I am 68 now and love beautiful things of all kinds, maybe even more than I might have if I had not had polio. If I could afford a stained glass piece of yours, I would definitely have one living in my home. Your work is wonderful!